No Arabic abstract
Majorana fermions are promising candidates for storing and processing information in topological quantum computation. The ability to control such individual information carriers in trapped ultracold atomic Fermi gases is a novel theme in quantum information science. However, fermionic atoms are neutral and thus are difficult to manipulate. Here, we theoretically investigate the control of emergent Majorana fermions in one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled atomic Fermi gases. We discuss (i) how to move Majorana fermions by increasing or decreasing an effective Zeeman field, which acts like a solid state control voltage gate; and (ii) how to create a pair of Majorana fermions by adding a magnetic impurity potential. We discuss the experimental realization of our control scheme in an ultracold Fermi gas of $^{40}$K atoms.
We propose an experimental scheme to simulate the fractionalization of particle number by using a one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled ultracold fermionic gas. The wanted spin-orbit coupling, a kink-like potential, and a conjugation-symmetry-breaking mass term are properly constructed by laser-atom interactions, leading to an effective low-energy relativistic Dirac Hamiltonian with a topologically nontrivial background field. The designed system supports a localized soliton excitation with a fractional particle number that is generally irrational and experimentally tunable, providing a direct realization of the celebrated generalized-Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. In addition, we elaborate on how to detect the induced soliton mode with the FPN in the system.
We theoretically investigate one-dimensional three-component spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases in the presence of Zeeman field. By solving the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equations, we obtain the phase diagram at given chemical potential and order parameter. We show that the system undergoes a phase transition from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid to topological superfluid as increasing the intensity of Zeeman field. By comparing to the two-component system, we find, besides the topological phase transition from the trivial superfluid to nontrivial topological superfluid, the system can always be in a nontrivial topological superfluid, and there are two Majorana zero energy regions while increasing the magnetic field. We find the three-component spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases in certain parameter range is more optimizing for experimental realization due to the smaller magnetic field needed. We therefore propose a promising candidate for realizing topological superfluid.
In spinor Bose-Einstein condensates, spin-changing collisions are a remarkable proxy to coherently realize macroscopic many-body quantum states. These processes have been, e.g., exploited to generate entanglement, to study dynamical quantum phase transitions, and proposed for realizing nematic phases in atomic condensates. In the same systems dressed by Raman beams, the coupling between spin and momentum induces a spin dependence in the scattering processes taking place in the gas. Here we show that, at weak couplings, such modulation of the collisions leads to an effective Hamiltonian which is equivalent to the one of an artificial spinor gas with spin-changing collisions that are tunable with the Raman intensity. By exploiting this dressed-basis description, we propose a robust protocol to coherently drive the spin-orbit coupled condensate into the ferromagnetic stripe phase via crossing a quantum phase transition of the effective low-energy model in an excited-state.
Motivated by recent experimental development, we investigate spin-orbit coupled repulsive Fermi atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice. Using the density-matrix renormalization group method, we calculate momentum distribution function, gap, and spin-correlation function to reveal rich ground-state properties. We find that spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can generate unconventional momentum distribution, which depends crucially on the filling. We call the corresponding phase with zero gap the SOC-induced metallic phase. We also show that SOC can drive the system from the antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic Mott insulators with spin rotating. As a result, a second-order quantum phase transition between the spin-rotating ferromagnetic Mott insulator and the SOC-induced metallic phase is predicted at the strong SOC. Here the spin rotating means that the spin orientations of the nearest-neighbor sites are not parallel or antiparallel, i.e., they have an intersection angle $theta in (0,pi )$. Finally, we show that the momentum $k_{mathrm{peak}}$, at which peak of the spin-structure factor appears, can also be affected dramatically by SOC. The analytical expression of this momentum with respect to the SOC strength is also derived. It suggests that the predicted spin-rotating ferromagnetic ($k_{mathrm{peak}% }<pi /2$) and antiferromagnetic ($pi /2<k_{mathrm{peak}}<pi $) correlations can be detected experimentally by measuring the SOC-dependent spin-structure factor via the time-of-flight imaging.
We study the dynamical behaviour of ultracold fermionic atoms loaded into an optical lattice under the presence of an effective magnetic flux, induced by spin-orbit coupled laser driving. At half filling, the resulting system can emulate a variety of iconic spin-1/2 models such as an Ising model, an XY model, a generic XXZ model with arbitrary anisotropy, or a collective one-axis twisting model. The validity of these different spin models is examined across the parameter space of flux and driving strength. In addition, there is a parameter regime where the system exhibits chiral, persistent features in the long-time dynamics. We explore these properties and discuss the role played by the systems symmetries. We also discuss experimentally-viable implementations.